


Incense

by ThunderheadFred



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale Has a Vulva (Good Omens), Crowley Has A Vulva (Good Omens), Crowley Has Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), First Time, Gender Identity, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Getting Together, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Ineffable Wives (Good Omens), Love Confessions, Making an Effort (Good Omens), Other, Scents & Smells, Sentient Bentley (Good Omens), The Bentley Ships It (Good Omens), The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-09-23 09:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20337778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderheadFred/pseuds/ThunderheadFred
Summary: Not you.I know whatYousmell like.Aziraphale asks Crowley to help him pick out a new suit. Crowley may not be ready to deal with the unexpected aftereffects of the ineffable body-swap, but the Bentley has her own ideas.A get-together fic laced with scent memories.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you prefer listening to your fics, Thimblerig has done a magnificent podfic version of this. Please [check it out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20620274) and give them some much-deserved kudos!
> 
> **Here there be headcanons. Beware if these are not your preferred flavor.**
> 
>   * Personally, I love me some ineffable asexuals, but for the purposes of this fic both Crowley and Aziraphale are accomplished dancers of the horizontal tango, with basically everybody _except_ each other.
>   * Crowley is genderfluid and has enjoyed an openly promiscuous sex life through the ages. My intention is not to portray these facets of Crowley as deviant or demonic, but rather as natural extensions of his celestial nature. Likewise, I tried to avoid any suggestions that gender fluidity and promiscuity are causally related; they're just happily sympatico in this case. 
>   * Aziraphale is initially cisgendered (insofar as an angel can be any such thing) and this is treated as a metaphor for his difficulty subverting what he _believes_ to be God's plan. This belief is not left unexamined; his growth in this regard constitutes a sizeable chunk of the fic, so. Be patient with him as he figures things out. 
>   * Crowley did not immediately fall in love with Aziraphale outside the Eastern Gate; instead I've forced him to stumble into that forgone conclusion much, much, much later. Like, say... _right now._
> 
> **All footnotes are hoverable/clickable links, and will return you to the text.**

##  _/ˈinˌsens/_

  1. a gum, spice, or other substance that is burned for the sweet smell it produces.
  2. make (someone) very angry.

* * *

Aziraphale was wearing a new cologne these days. New to him, surely, but also _New; full stop._ A scent unknown even to Crowley, which was impossible.

Crowley had been around long enough[1] to know there was no such thing as a new smell; certainly no such thing as a new Aziraphale. These were simple facts, absolute truths even a demon could believe in. Or at least they _had_ been until roughly one month previous when the world had failed to end.

Reality still appeared beholden to the same fundamental laws as before; but Crowley had also been around long enough to mistrust anything thing as wishy-washy as reality. Night and day appeared to be keeping well enough apart, and upwards still disagreed with downwards in both parabolic senses. Crowley and Aziraphale, however, seemed to have bungled the repelling energy that had defined six thousand years of mutual thwarting. A side-effect of wearing one-another’s bodies like fancy dress, apparently.

Without a Hellish tether tugging on his every idle thought,[2] Crowley was experiencing an alarming sense of weightlessness. This was unprecedented—and entirely uncalled for, he thought. Crowley had never felt lighthearted in his entire existence; he wasn’t about to start now.

Perhaps in an effort to drum up some good old-fashioned _raison d’être,_ Crowley and Aziraphale continued to frequent their traditional rendezvous locations, divine plan or no. Their meetings no longer winked towards any nefarious or divine agenda, indeed there seemed to be no discernible purpose at all. Despite this, the frequency of these clandestine brunches rapidly escalated from once or twice a century to a regular thing for elevenses.

At present, the two quantum-entangled occult/celestial beings sat on their ineffable duffs, having retired to pair of spindly-legged café chairs outside Aziraphale’s favorite Soho patisserie.[3] Even before the end of the world, Crowley and Aziraphale had reconnoitered on Greek Street enough times to be considered urban legends. Which is to say: the quaint backdrop was not in itself unusual. What was truly avant-garde was the staging. The aforementioned spindly-legged café chairs had, over the course of several post-apocalyptic weeks, somehow wibble-wobbled closer and closer together of their own accord until they settled into a much more side-by-side configuration than tradition demanded;[4] not quite close enough to touch by accident, but close enough to consider the eventual possibility.

Close enough to smell each other, at any rate.

This new cologne had bubbled up in the immediate aftermath of Aziraphale’s clever little body-swapping scheme, and Crowley initially mistook it for a wayward splash of _l’eau bénite._ However, as the weeks of purposelessness began to yawn out before them and Aziraphale’s born-again cloud of damnable lightness failed to politely bugger off, Crowley remained unable to identify a single olfactory note.

Crowley didn’t exactly pride himself on being able to recognize (and monetize) every odorous compound in existence, but only because pride was too small a word for his level of expertise. Since the late 19th century, the increasingly wealthy[5] heirs of Anthony J. Crowley (Esq.) had been brewing up snake-oil by way of a privately-held R&D lab in Geneva, and even _that_ was merely the latest and most industrious iteration of Crowley’s knowledge on the subject. For millennia, he had been quietly cataloging the entire elusive and ephemeral library of earthly smells. As the foremost representative of Hell on Earth, he had sampled every stench the world was capable of off-gassing, and made no distinctions between artful and obscene, putrid and divine. He’d known the reek of too many shit-slick alleyways in the shadows of opera houses to think one could exist without the other.

Crowley couldn't help his certainty. Facts were facts. Impossible or not, Aziraphale smelled _new._ New and fresh; surrounded by a scent so translucent it shouldn’t have been traceable at all. Especially not on a Soho backstreet, drowned out by exhaust fumes and fresh-baked French bread and coffee grounds. And _nothing_ should have been capable of defeating the screeching perfume of the woman sitting at a neighboring table; an ambitious brunette who kept trying to catch Crowley’s eye. He smiled thinly, practically a grimace, hoping to telegraph_ too much Jimmy Choo._ She went back to her phone call.

It wasn’t just the smell in the air. The world itself felt vibrantly off-kilter, had for a while now. The _newness_ of it all was chafing, as if Crowley’s brain had rotated ninety degrees inside his skull without asking. Just to be sure, he glanced down the street and half-expected to see a world gone flat, but everything was in order all the way down. The expected elemental particles seemed to be buzzing around in (mostly) the correct positions. Bosons and fermions foxtrotted with their superpartners to all the right steps. Still, Crowley sensed it like a ringing in his ears: the celestial harmonies had been re-tuned by an overeager tween who hadn’t been informed the dial wasn’t meant to go to eleven.

A scant few weeks after doomsday, autumn was gorgeously sashaying across London in a taking-good-weather-for-granted sort of way which Crowley found personally insulting. Aziraphale, meanwhile, seemed to have settled into eternal unemployment with a kind of grace _(ugh)_ that Crowley could scarcely manage. An incomprehensibly unsweetened double-shot of espresso steamed between Aziraphale’s hands; Crowley could smell _that_ too. The angel watched intermittent traffic percolate down the street, a lopsided grin glooping across his face, as if he knew exactly how indecent he was being.

Crowley seized the opening. With Aziraphale distracted (something about the Bentley’s parking job across the way had him looking far-gone and contemplative) Crowley darted out his tongue for a better whiff. He tasted waxy greenery on a soap-fresh breeze. Smooth minerals like wet virgin soil after the rain. Delicate purple blooms, so pale they were almost white. He suppressed an urge to hiss while he filed through his internal encyclopedia.

_Couldn’t be natural, not with that sillage. Not strong enough for the standard aldehydes either. No back-end hints of iso-E or Romandolide or even Tetrahydrolinalol—_

“Not _genuine_ lilac. Can’t be. S’impossible.” 

Aziraphale blinked dazedly, turning his attention to Crowley. 

Challenged by such soft scrutiny, Crowley felt his face heating. He tried to hide behind his coffee, but clumsily huffed a noseful of whole-fat instead. With a jolt, he looked down at the traitorous beverage and realized he was inexplicably holding a flat white… _with micro-foam._

“Our orders got flipped,” mumbled Crowley, wiping his tortured nose with the back of his hand.

“Nonsense,” said Aziraphale. He sampled the bitterness in his own cup with a savvy not-quite-grin. “I think you got exactly what you wanted.”

_Well then. _Crowley inhaled another surprise dose of crema, feeling sticky all over.

Primly, Aziraphale set down his cup. The squared-off ceramic _clinked_ with a flat, modern chord that sounded through Crowley’s head like a gong.

“You know my dear, I’ve thought it over. I think I _would_ like to take you up on that offer.”

Crowley _hnnnged; _a huge milky bubble popped behind his teeth. Clearing his throat, he said, oh-so-casually,[6] “What offer was that?”

“The tour of the shops.” Aziraphale flattened his hand across his vest, finger catching on his watch chain. “You’re quite right. It’s well past time for a new suit.”

* * *

In the beginning—if there is such a thing—the angels were Made. 

Made, not born, because God had yet to invent the middle man. Mind you this was in the Very Beginning, before Time started going around loudly announcing itself as such. Angels were neither born nor particularly given to dying, and were thus were immune to the myriad fleshy reproductive compulsions that were soon to, well, _come._

Reproduce they did not, but God’s first creations were anything but flaccid. No garden of potted roses, these. Oh no. The Celestial Host exploded from the Biggest Ever Bang as a million-eyed wave of grand, experimental ideas. They were feelings and forces made flesh.[7] They were terribly Divine. They were the inglorious chaos of existence tempered into many-faced Beings. They were flapping wings and screaming mouths and undying flames.

High among those eternal ranks sauntered the glorious celestial embodiment of Temptation; an angel as pure as any other, if pure[8] is the word you really want to use. Spun from starstuff and plasma clouds, clothed in the push-pull fabric of space-time, and Made, as every angel was Made, with a purpose. 

Temptation, desire, inspiration. A bespoke angel if there ever was one, cut to confound and challenge Her flock. Or, Her Flock-To-Be, since humanity was, at this point in not-time, merely a cloud of atoms congealing without a planet or even a star worth orbiting. 

So Temptation was Made, and for a time, the making was good.[9] Atoms were tempted into all kinds of relations with other atoms. Gasses suddenly got it in their heads to compress _whiz-bang_ into showy balls of fire. Eventually, a few Magellanic clouds puffed up and one or two galaxies got to spinning all by themselves.

Yes, it was good, but all good things get dull rather quickly. This was especially true for the angels, who were unlucky enough to be the first thinking and feeling beings in all of Creation, and thus had a lot to complain about. What was Temptation _doing,_ mucking about with the universe’s harmonious entropy? Why did everything suddenly seem to slide inexorably toward something else? Ugh, _gravity,_ who came up with _that?_ There couldn’t possibly be any more _banging,_ that was agreed upon immediately. 

_Oh fine,_ said God, because She was sick of all the whining. _I suppose I’ll have to go and Make people, just to teach you._

And so, a few million-billion asteroid mishaps later, homo-sapiens fell stupidly from the trees, and Temptation, who was the heaviest and most singular of all God’s works, tripped straight down after them. Once you invent gravity it’s no use avoiding it. What could Newton’s apple do, but grow lusciously ripe and fall from the very branch that sprouted it?

Ah but apples, no. That’s skipping too far ahead.

* * *

Sure it _sounded_ casual. “Touring the shops.” The sort of no-sweat outing that two friends were likely to undertake on a slow weekday. _Let’s go shopping_ sounded like nothing at all in Crowley’s head—but his serpentine shit of an inner voice had duped him yet again.

Shopping, sure. Being friends, alright. That was… Fine.

Crowley and Aziraphale were _friends_ now, in every capacity that mattered. Averting the end of the world had this effect on slow-burn antagonism. Indeed, their _friendship_ had been duly recorded in both Heaven and Hell as an aberration worthy of eternal smiting, and since smiting proved impossible, Crowley and Aziraphale had found themselves eternally jobless and… well. _Friendlier_ than ever.

Never quite _friendly_ enough for Crowley, but that was just the snake acting up again. Bad. Naughty. Prone to squeezing and biting and writhing naked in the grass and—

_Friends_.

The pile of clothes in Crowley’s arms grew heavy; he tried shifting the load to his other hip but had long-since surpassed the acceptable weight limit for casual perusing. Now he was at serious risk of indulging someone. On cue, Aziraphale lurched toward a rack and grabbed a pudgy little tartan tweed. Crowley hissed and slapped the jacket away.

“You agreed,” he warned.

“Yes yes. Right. Of course.” Aziraphale mournfully dismissed the tartan and hunted out its svelte and alluring cousin: a trim caramel-colored linen blend with mossy windowpane check. “How about this one?” Doubtfully holding it up to his chest, he was unable to appreciate the instantaneous brightening effect it had on his coloring.

Crowley’s throat creaked; something else slithered. In lieu of speech, he made a face. He hoped it was an approving face. Aziraphale sighed contentedly and draped the jacket over his arm.

There was that damned scent again, cooling its way down Crowley’s throat like water in the shade. Aiming for annoyance, Crowley sniffed at the invisible halo around Aziraphale’s temples.

“What _izzz_ that?”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale turned abruptly. He swelled up from below, close enough to knock heads. His beady little eyes refused to tilt any higher than Crowley’s mouth.

“Uh.” Crowley tried to adjust to this sudden change in altitude. The air seemed awfully thin up here… “New cologne? Something, er. New.”

“New? Yes, I suppose I have been— Oh, drat! Do you know, I completely forgot my customary splash this morning. Got caught up in something rather—” With a cagey look, Aziraphale tore off the end of that sentence and lifted his sleeve to his nose. “Don’t tell me I’m musty.”

“An antique bookseller? Musty? I never.”

Aziraphale donned his most put-upon look and pursed his lips, shaking the dust from his cuffs. “Anyway, I’m surprised you can smell anything over that… _Love Potion Number Nine_ or whatever musky nonsense you insist on sporting these days.”

“Ugh. _As if._ I do not _sport.”_ Crowley would never; he often bragged he never wore the same cologne twice.[10] Besides, he hadn’t worn bottled cologne in decades. Not since _Eau Sauvage_ had been reformulated. He’d thrown a brief tantrum about it in the seventies, then regained his sanity, shaved off his mustache, and decided to set up a miniature lab at home. It mostly sat unused. Truthfully, few things beat his old standby: cracking raw spices beneath his heels. Smashing nature into snake-skin and concrete added a distinct _disrespecting God_ top note to the fragrance that he always enjoyed, plus it intimidated the plants.

Crowley drew a slim-cut button-down from the rack and held it up to Aziraphale’s musty old chest for assessment. Pastel sage with a modern textural knit, a gorgeous match to that jacket draped in Aziraphale’s arms, but… he _tch’ed._ “Not quite you, is it?”

“Oh I don’t know about that.” Aziraphale intercepted the shirt, adding it to Crowley’s stack like the final straw, then clicked his teeth together and pulled up his pocket watch to note the time. An unintelligible emotion crossed his face. “I didn't think this would take quite such a long time…”

_Never mind me,_ Crowley thought bitterly, jangling his armfuls of clothes. He must have been holding half the shop’s inventory hostage by now, and Aziraphale was no closer to making a decision. “Sorry, do you have a pressing appointment elsewhere?”

“Oh, always.” Aziraphale’s thumb traced his winding knob. “Time does fly.”

Cryptic celestial angst; wonderful. Two could play that game. How much infernal snottiness could spew from one mouth? Crowley aimed to find out.

“Aww, well. By all means, don’t let me keep you. Got my own commitments, haven't I? Ever since Hell won the _Great War_ there’ve been ever so many asses to spit-roast! Dear Lord, I think I'm coming down with a bad case of pitchfork wrist.” He wanked a handful of hot air. “Look at that flop! Awful. Can barely keep it up anymore.”

Aziraphale’s eyes ticked over Crowley, one and done. _“Honestly.” _

The angel waved down a shop attendant of fashionably indiscernible gender,[11] who seemed relieved to finally be summoned. This wasn’t the type of boutique where one was meant to shuffle about unsupervised with armfuls of the season’s hand-made merchandise. Not that Crowley cared.

Aziraphale smiled, a tad apologetically. “Rowan dear. Might we borrow a fitting room, please?”

Responding to the dose of unadulterated vitamin D beaming off Aziraphale’s face, Rowan escorted the shop’s only customers to the back.

“Here, angel. I’ll just…” Crowley tried to hand off the payload, but Aziraphale was having none of it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. How can you expect me to make so many life-altering sartorial decisions by myself?”

Crowley peered into the spacious changing room and six thousand years of fully-clothed shared history flashed sweatily before his eyes. He sized up the mirrored walls and eyed the velvet-upholstered wingback chair in the corner of the room as if it were brandishing a switchblade. “Um,” he decided.

Exasperated, Aziraphale looked at Rowan the Extraordinarily Posh Salesperson for reassurance. “He’s so dramatic.”

There was nary a trace of euphemistic undertone in Rowan’s professional sotto voice as they chimed, “Take your time, gentlemen,” but Crowley could smell a wink.

With one expertly-applied pinch to the elbow, Aziraphale yanked Crowley into the changing room. His freshness continued to surprise. Lines continued to be crossed. Toes continued to be stepped on.

Crowley took a deep breath; that turned out to be a mistake.

* * *

Scent memory was a nasty trick to play on a demon, who—aside from trace amounts of smoke—had no natural odors of his own. Despite his handicap, Crowley could smell every facet of _them_, memorize every insignificant little detail, stowing away intangible fragments of every human he’d ever touched. Because touch them he did. Sometimes with leather accessories. _Enthusiastically._

Sexual yearning was merely the sweatiest manifestation of Crowley’s deep and damnable itches, one he saw fit to scratch like any other, even if it never helped. Demonic corporations tended toward discomfort.[12] No matter what he wore or how he wore it, his clothes felt woolen, his skin too tight. Spa water or straight bourbon in his glass, his throat was always dry. His bones always creaked, his aches never settled. It made no difference how hard or how often or how expertly Crowley courted, he only ever experienced a borrowed, proximate brand of satisfaction.

Despite all this, Crowley did not suffer through eternity in a state of disheveled, torturous desire. Nothing quite so one-note or banal, he wouldn’t have stood for it.

But it wasn’t precisely _not_ that, either. 

Every so often he freely indulged in the inevitable conclusions of near-constant arousal. Whoever heard of a prudish incubus?[13] Absurd. Indeed, he had no theoretical or ethical problem with sex, even when slopping through the chore face-to-face with all those smelly, hairy little un-monkeys. They were charming really, the way they went all starry-eyed for the littlest things. So what if it was a bit of a flash job, tumbling in the human style? Crowley had fallen for it more than once. 

That was the problem: falling. He just _did; _it was his _whole thing_. It was one big whoopsie, a banana peel he always saw coming. Human beings glittered in and out of existence so quickly. It hurt, _it burned_, to breathe deeply of their ashes. And yet, and yet… 

Aziraphale and all his angelic workplace associates got off on the idea that they, and Only They, were the beings of incorruptible love, while the demons cried out inflamed by lust and the poor unfortunate humans merely blustered about pretending at both. There were no such distinctions, Crowley had learned early on. Not really.

Of course, Crowley almost immediately forgot everything he’d learned early on,[14] and invented sorrier fictions to tell himself at night, because honestly, Tempting Mankind Into Falling From Grace sounds much sexier and more rebellious than, “dunno, got lonely.”

Even more damning, Crowley had (perhaps deliberately) ignored the foregone conclusion that lurked within his favored shades of grey. If a demon such as himself was capable of that four-letter word that shall not be mentioned here, then an angel such as Aziraphale likely possessed some equal capacity for corruption. This wasn’t even a particularly well-kept secret. Aziraphale was a hedonistic pleasure-magnet, exactly the sort of cake-eating tulip-fancier prone to having his head lopped off by a righteous mob.

In six thousand years of antagonizing, Crowley had never once swiped at the low-hanging fruit of Aziraphale’s obvious corruptibility. The reason they mutually avoided that subject was a subject Crowley refused to broach at all... until they’d swapped bodies. Crowley had finally slithered into Aziraphale’s pants after eons of curiosity, but in a far more literal sense than he’d hoped.

Crowley had spent the equivalent of entire human lifetimes contemplating the mysteries inherent to Aziraphale’s pants. Of course he had. He was a philosopher of Hell, and as previously established, Lust was a fundamental part of demonic morphology, like a taste for leather jackets and cars that went _vroom._ In the slipperiest recesses of Crowley’s near-limitless imagination, Aziraphale’s Pants were a mind palace unto themselves, full of vigorously colorful mental images.

Crowley had long suspected that sushi wasn’t the only afternoon delight Aziraphale indulged in, but the end of the world was awfully late in the game to receive such long-awaited confirmation. While inhabiting Aziraphale’s body, Crowley had become intimately aware that Aziraphale had indeed opted-in to the full human experience.

Lo! The angel did put forth the Effort to glorify God’s creation. Praise be, hallelujah.

Male, of course, the way She’d offhandedly Made them both so many equal rights movements ago. Not for any important reason, Crowley knew, but because it had initially meant less paperwork. Primitive humans had mistaken some truly understated dimorphism as a sign that _outie_ was the default and therefore superior configuration. For centuries, dick-wagging was the fastest way to sign your name. Point and shoot. From day one, Men weaponized their dangliest bits, insuring that no one would question the pendulous vulnerability of their all-powerful can[n]on.

Crowley preferred rib meat. It had taken centuries for Temptation to accept any single configuration of the human body as a genuine extension of themself. Eventually Crowley settled on thinking of gender as a crude but effective costume, an exoskeleton of rickety stilts and papier-mâché. Not half as fun as the Bentley, but nonetheless a means to various earthly ends, not all of them miserable.

It wasn’t until Crowley had puppeteered Aziraphale’s bones that he realized how it felt to fully _inhabit_ one’s flesh. The angel's unexamined comfort with his chosen gender was obvious, but that was only the start of it. Aziraphale’s body had been savored, cherished, pampered. It had been spoiled and indulged until, in all its un-angelic decadence, it had the audacity to_ jiggle._

Crowley had only ever been a second-hand witness to Aziraphale’s softness. Gazing at a delicious five-course meal for centuries and now, finally, he had a chance to smear his tongue across the plate. Figuratively, of course. He’d behaved himself. Mostly.

The naughtiest thing Crowley could bring himself to do in Aziraphale’s body had been to read a first-edition of _A House of Pomegranates_ in the bath. A venial sin, he figured. Easily forgivable. Still, in the event that Aziraphale might remember whatever his body had gotten up to without him, Crowley had sweetened the deal with cocoa, rose petals, vanilla candles, mood music. Truly, the works.[15] At the time, it had seemed only fair to give the angel’s body one last sensual hurrah, just in case their plan went up in so much holy smoke.

Naked and lubricated in colloidal emollients, with borrowed comfort soaking through him toe to tip; Crowley had left the angel’s business well enough alone. But there was no denying the facts. Aziraphale’s cock was every bit as comfortable and lived-in as the rest of his corporation. Him and his great flaming sword; of _course_ he’d give himself a prick and treat it like a miracle.

Anyway, bodies were little more than philosophical nonsense. The body swap experience had left Crowley with only one existential question of any true merit:

Did Aziraphale fuck?

* * *

The fitting room door closed with a well-weighted _snick_, sealing Crowley in his sepulcher. Directly, Aziraphale began to peel off his coat.

“What do you think, my dear? Shirts first? Or trousers?”

Crowley moved his head dumbly, bobbling in place like a plastic car ornament. Aziraphale took this as some kind of semaphore. “Yes, you’re right. Best to do it all in one fell swoop.”

Aziraphale’s hands were on his cuffs already.

“Swoop—” Crowley said, sitting down. Well, not _sitting_, precisely. It was more that Crowley failed to continue standing all at once in a bruising, _whooshing_ sort of way.[16] Fortunately, the wingback was cushioned like a song, and caught him easily; an old friend waiting at the bottom of a trust fall. He hated it.

Aziraphale waited until his audience was watching, then promptly made his bowtie disappear. It was the first genuinely astounding sleight of hand Crowley had ever seen him do. One button, two, and suddenly—_poof_—Aziraphale’s throat existed in a way it never had before, like magic. Crowley stared.

Aziraphale stared back, blinking prettily. “It’s been so long; I forgot how exciting this can be!”

Crowley attempted to digest the thousands upon thousands of layers crammed beneath Aziraphale’s deceptively airy tone, his words like a string of rainbow scarves hauled out and looped dangerously around Crowley’s neck. Mysterious implications hovered alongside mysterious cologne; so many implications they got caught in Crowley’s gullet still kicking and screaming, a ball of frantic fur and breaking bones.

“They’re just clothes,” Crowley coughed, mostly to reassure himself.

“Ahh, but the clothes make the man, they say.” Aziraphale’s shirt went onto a peg. Crowley stared at it in horror; an empty angel skin, a molted husk. It was obscene.

Crowley trained his voice into perfect flatness. “Says who?”

“I don’t know, Crowley. _Someone,_ surely.”

Imagination was one thing. This was a changing room on Saville Row. Nothing here to get all school-girl about, when Aziraphale was undertaking their first foray into “friends casually undressing in front of other friends” as if it were Sunday brunch. _Friends_ didn’t need to feel so strongly about this, did they. _Friends_ would keep their thoughts well enough above the belt.

Crowley blinked. Aziraphale’s belt. It was gone.

No, it was rolled up like a cinnamon bun and snickering from atop a pair of scuffed wingtip brogues. Crowley had walked in those shoes, the tartan lining worn bald where Aziraphale’s heels rubbed in… Crowley looked at the ceiling but Heaven, predictably, was no help at all.

Every sound in the world held its breath as Aziraphale’s button fly whispered open. It seemed blasphemous to pray at a time like this, but Crowley shuddered out a silent _oh Lord._

He should have known better than to ask for favors from the terror of the Old Testament, because Aziraphale immediately tutted: “Crowley, wake up.”

Thank God for opaque sunglasses, at least. Crowley’s pupils were currently wide enough to admit a lorry.

Aziraphale stood upright as a pillar, hand outstretched, waiting for something. He was unashamedly nude in the manner of classical statues; unlike a Grecian however, his Southern Hemisphere was absolutely flat. Startled, Crowley’s head tilted of its own accord. His brain took some critical volumetric estimates of Aziraphale’s unexpected tailoring, and realized…

Impossible. Cardinal poles had been flipped, magnets had been forced together. Crowley’s axis tilted, the entire world spun backwards.

The Earth was not flat at all. She was a woman.

* * *

Smoke signals can be seen from a long way off, but good luck making out the fine print. Most civilizations kicked off with some sort of ritual fire, and Crowley knew how to read auspices better than most, having seen the one and only progenitive pillar of flame up close before it fell from an angel’s hand like so much poisoned candy. _’Twas the vital spark that separated man from beast _and blah blah blah. Men may have burned it, but women maintained it. 

Such women had taught Crowley a thing or two, over the years. They called him into their blazing circles to run amok, but the muck would always take its run of him.One stray whiff of sacred, sweetened smoke, even millennia later, and Crowley stumbled backward through the channels of memory from which nothing escapes, down and down and down, back into the arms of the women of the temple. Back to their undying hearths, their raptures and frenzied songs, their garlands of decaying flowers. Nestled softly at home amidst the jiggling of their breasts. 

The women of the temple. 

You’d think the temple itself would be the thing worth remembering; a facade that stands even now, somewhere or someplace, crumbling nobly on a hillside. All that stone and geometry, a march of impermanent deities with their heads boxed off in museums. Maybe Aziraphale would know why any of that matters. Crowley forgets.

No, Crowley remembers. 

These women, Eve’s wise and clever daughters, who were not so easily misled. They owned themselves. How they baffled and delighted, demanding ecstasy and salvation all together. Temptation slid into the hearth-warm shelter of their arms and found such softness upon landing that they undertook the final descent: writhing for the first time in human form. 

Shedding, growing, transforming. Bowing at their feet, submitting to vile transcendence. Waking in pieces, skin sloughed off. Hands braided through hair, tying them back together. And just like that, Crawley discovered no more or less than God’s favored creatures. Who was tempting whom? Ah well. 

Women divined the future in those days, read all that was to come in entrails and smoke, because one cursed nip of fruit was all it took to turn half of humanity into witches. Partly Crawley’s doing—and he never managed to swallow that guilt, not really. A weight no immortal could ever help to carry: fragile bodies made to wrench life into the world—and thus to know, in one fatal new-made breath—how it was all meant to end.

Women whispered of pleasure and blood and the shattering of kings, and Crawley believed every word, because Death was always there, always nodding, and He would know.

When they died, Crowley lived in their clothes. Treasured their baubles of bronze and silver and gold. Wore what shapes she could recall, bent her form to feel their pain, to bleed in their rhythms. It wasn’t necessary; it was, if anything, adolescent theatre, but it was something. _They_ were something, and Crowley enviously loved them, longed for them. They carried such life in their bodies and still they died—_they died_—and those that mourned soon followed. Why would God make beings such as these, so precious and impermanent, only to leave them to wither one by one?

Crowley wore flowers in her hair, for a time. Their scent, like so many Earthly revelations, could scarcely be preserved.

* * *

#### Footnotes

  1. Since the Beginning.[^]
  2. For how could one truly be idle without a heavy burden worth ignoring?[^]
  3. Maison Bertaux, est. 1871. The place had seen some shit.[^]
  4. Tradition demanded hereditary enemies sit directly opposite one another, all the better to glare down noses and foil plans.[^]
  5. (and uncannily similar-looking)[^]
  6. In no way casually.[^]
  7. Or something like flesh, anyway.[^]
  8. Purity and angels go together about as well as toothpaste and marmalade, but the gang of puritans currently calling themselves “angels” have forgotten this, and don’t care to be reminded.[^]
  9. Well, “good” insofar as nothing exploded any worse, since the Big Bang proved a difficult act to follow.[^]
  10. Objectively untrue. He had several recurring favorites. For instance: in a fit of hedonistic self-pity at the tail-end of 1919, Crowley upended an entire bottle of Mitsuoko directly onto his bed and attempted to light both himself and the mattress on fire. [^]
  11. And impeccable taste in three-piece suits.[^]
  12. Which explained why they all looked elaborately unwashed, and why Crowley, on some level or other, always lurched about as if vaguely, unreachably itchy.[^]
  13. The author of this fanfic, for one, who has read about them in other, better fanfics.[^]
  14. He also forgot his own name, a celestial name if there ever was one, a splendidly gleaming and multi-syllabic crescendo that could burst a mortal straight into flames. Crowley had never cared for it.[^]
  15. Just to figuratively cover his ass. Not because it felt good. Honestly.[^]
  16. Falling. It’s called falling.[^]


	2. Chapter 2

If she hadn’t been so slippery, Crowley would’ve been buried beneath infernal affairs write-ups by the end of Earth’s first jaunt around the sun. Not because she didn’t do her job, _oh no, _but because she did it so very, very well.

Crowley walked beside God’s chosen and asked what they desired, sought the most luxurious and profitable ways to make it. From the word ‘trouble,’ a juicy blend of ego and truculence ripened the apples of the serpent’s eyes, no other motivation required. Every dispatch Hell ever sent was promptly crumpled and tossed over one shoulder like so much spilling salt as Crowley tempted whomsoever she damn well pleased,[1] again and again and again. In so doing, she studied the invisible and forgotten trades of women, telling head office she was helping to beguile and adulterate and seduce, which was occasionally true. But in learning their secrets, Crowley also learned their sweetness. She learned to sing and scold and swaddle, learned how to snake-charm a child so a mother’s heart could be free.

She dipped her hands into all kinds of steamy human pots back then; learned from withered crones how to extract and distill, watched dye-makers strangle vivid color from a mud-brown world. She studied the ingenious methods by which Earth’s sweetest life-givers could be inverted and crafted into alcohol and opium, kohl and camphor. She crafted herself with similar care: to be gazed at, drifted toward, to fill or be filled. In the pursuit of knowledge and pleasure,[2] Crowley was a void hungrily encountered, a deep dark well reflecting undiscovered stars. 

In other forms, Crawley slunk on the ground. He sank beneath it when he could, and in the smut-clogged veins of cities he witnessed such crimes committed in the name of passion that he grow hateful of the pretense. Passion was _his_ business; where did the apes get off making such a mess of things? No, defiling was a human invention; Temptation required no such power exchanges. Strutting into inner circles, he made a study of scientists and mathematicians and painters, marveling at the way so many hoarded their intellectualism all to themselves, making cocksure prizes of their gifts. For all their arrogance, they were no less brilliant, lit from within by the alchemy of cognitive dissonance. Innovators and inventors, thieves and revisors. Fueled, always, by the moronic belief that the correct application of pressure or heat would turn any clump of mud to gold. If one is a fool, sure.

For Crawley, the fun was in the filth. Wallowing, writhing. _Being_ defiled, _that_ was more like it, really spitting in God’s eye. Of course, sometimes a cigar was just a cigar. Crowley wasn’t above admitting that once in a blue moon, he just desperately needed a spanking. Here he was, the architect of the graviton, allowing himself to rut and beg and grovel, to lick their reeking human feet. Delicious. And if the labors of the human tongue could bring a demon back to the gilded rim of heaven? _Well._ No one downstairs had to know.

The Earth required two opposing poles[3] to keep itself spinning, luckily Temptation was hardly so limited. What they did to please themself was seek mankind’s truest pleasures, the ecstatic heights that did not taste of exploitation or regret. This rarest of dishes became their particular _spécialité de la maison, _though few remembered their first taste. Some drove hard with power and fire and largesse until their fantasies grew unstoppable, throat-ripping fangs. Some had no taste for carnality at all, but equal pleasure could be found in their ecstasies of effort, the creases of their minds unfurling into genius. Those lucky few whom Temptation looked upon for pleasure would roll panting from their beds every morning with their neurons stuttering to life like lighting bugs.

It was easy enough to spin all this freelance work as sin. It certainly _looked_ sinful, this panoply of sensual pleasures that sprouted underfoot, rioting out from art and music and food and engineering, but the humans mostly did that for themselves. Temptation, being something of a born-again voyeur, was only too happy to get their jollies by poxy.

_Grow better, _Temptation whispered; and thus seduced into splendor, humanity grew.

And seeing that? _Oh, ohhhh. Yesssss._

* * *

“Oh don’t start,” Aziraphale said.

Start what, Crowley wondered. _Start what? _

Aziraphale simply stood there; unhelpfully nude and unblinking. His eyes were doing some kind of trick with the light. It was hard to look at him head-on, lest that floodwater blue gaze pour directly into Crowley’s chest. Drowning was a wretched way to go, but if he _had_ to…

Deep, deep, down, somewhere infinitely beyond the frozen sphincter of Satan’s own impenetrable asshole, Crowley knew he’d finally been outmaneuvered_. _With shaking fingers, he took Aziraphale’s hand.

“Crowley, you magnificent dove. I meant the_ trousers.”_

Crowley’s palm sizzled. He spluttered and pulled away, digging through the pile of clothes on his lap. “Course. Right. _Trousers_. Yes. Kind of… socks for your legs.”

Eventually, he extracted a pair of flat-fronts made from honest-to-goodness woolen sharkskin. He wondered how gravity continued holding him to the earth, what with all these reality breaking flip-flops underway.

_Flip flops._ Was _that_ their future? _No._ Aziraphale would _never _indulge in such depravity… or would he? Would _she?_

“Are you quite alright?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yes,” Crowley said. “No.” Crowley said. “When did this happen?” Crowley said.

Aziraphale pulled on his pants and trousers one leg at a time, just as he had done every day for centuries. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Everything?” Crowley was having a terrible time making sense of this. In six thousand years on Earth, Aziraphale had never presented as anything other than a cisgendered man—not to Crowley’s knowledge, anyway. The physical change itself was hardly shocking,[4] but Crowley could not fathom _Aziraphale_ doing all this transforming: new cologne, new suit… new _body._ Aziraphale, who had stuck to the same bloody _hairstyle_ since the dawn of man. This was too much, too fast.

Or perhaps it wasn’t. Crowley considered the molehill.

Aziraphale still presented exactly as he always had. No perceptible changes to voice or posture or general affectation. No apparent change in taste, either; Crowley tutted at the shirt Aziraphale reached for, handed him a better one.

“Pronouns?” Crowley blurted.

“What?”

“What pronouns should I be using?”

“Oh, I… I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I don’t know what’s appropriate…” Aziraphale slipped his arms into a sleek button-down. Optic white, with a field of peachy-keen clouds frolicking across. Timidly, he added, “Do you suppose the old he/him will do?”

Crowley masterfully continued not to double-take every time Aziraphale opened his mouth.[5] “Sure. If you want. But you know… you don’t _have_ to pick one or the other, no matter which way you button your trousers. It’s all sort of...” Crowley waved an ineffable hand, “for us anyway.”

“Speak for yourself.” Aziraphale rolled his shoulders haughtily. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of tradition.”

“Oh really.” Crowley snorted. “Depends on the tradition.”

On shakier footing now, Aziraphale failed to cinch his shirt buttons in the correct order. With a tight chuckle, he reopened the shirt and gave Crowley a pleading look. “I’m all butterfingers… will you help?”

“Uhhh. You want…” Crowley’s fingers reached out of their own accord, as if to say _gimme gimme_. He clenched them into fists.

“Would you, dear?”

A gravelly cough rumbled up from Crowley’s solar plexus and somehow propelled him off the chair and straight into Aziraphale’s shirtfront. Crowley was more accustomed to _unbuttoning_ other people’s shirts, but no matter, he could improvise. Starting at the bottom,[6] he began nimbly threading round pegs through square holes.

The silence grew elaborately pregnant, like a Fabergé egg. Crowley could only ignore the sweetened ghost of an apricot tart on Aziraphale’s breath for ten complete seconds before he cracked right down the middle.

His voice cracked too; he cleared his throat. “I’ve never known you to be… this way inclined.”

“No,” Aziraphale admitted. “Just this morning.”

“This morning.” The spin roomed. Crowley clung to Aziraphale’s shirt, still only halfway buttoned. “And what was so precipitous about _this_ morning?! What, you woke up, had a cup of tea and thought ‘_hmm,_ feel like a spot of clitoris today!’”

“Crowley!”

“Aziraphale! You can’t just wake up one morning and _decide.”_

“Why not? _You_ can.”

Crowley’s mouth opened, but there was no rebuttal to that; Aziraphale was right; had every right. Still, the knee did jerk. “What’s that s’posed to mean?” Crowley muttered darkly.

“Nothing! Nothing _bad, _certainly.”

“It’s not bloody hollandaise.” Crowley pointedly left the last button undone and snatched his hands back, where he’d be safer. “_Genderfluid_ isn’t something you splash in a mimosa.”

“I know that!” A timid pause. Then, in a voice so small it squeaked, Aziraphale clarified: “A most forgiving bartender explained as much to me.”

Every muscle in Crowley’s face contracted into an involuntary rictus grin. He spun back down into his chair with a round of vindicated applause.

Aziraphale wilted. “I know, I know! I’m an absolute _relic! _For goodness sake, I’ve been living in Soho since it was _built_, and—”

“Oh come off it. At least you’re not a sexless six-thousand-year-old mega-virgin.”

“Well of course not! It's not as if I was Made yesterday—” Aziraphale met Crowley’s eyes in the mirror. Far from the blushing violet Crowley expected; the angel looked _livid_. “Wait just one minute… How on Earth did you know that?”[7]

“Oh, uhhh. Same way you sniffed out all the uhhh—_you know_—in Tadfield. Same hat, extra attachments. Don’t worry about it.”

Aziraphale looked _very _worried about it. They’d never discussed their so-called private lives; not once. They had deliberately _not_ talked about intimacy (sexual or otherwise) for such an incredibly long time that their fluency in Subjects To Avoid surpassed their proficiencies in nearly every other spoken language.[8] Such avoidance was born not from petty embarrassment or shame[9] but out of the same instinct for self-preservation that prevented them from casually embracing or giving each other considerate gifts or admitting that they both had learned to dance and wouldn’t it be funny if…

It was the same reason people generally avoided running off the edges of cliffs.

“I see!” Aziraphale’s left arm had somehow got stuck all the way down the right sleeve of a cardigan and would not come out again. “And pray tell, exactly _what_ would be so troublesome if I _was_ asexual?”

“Nothing! Until _very_ recently,[10] that’s exactly what I thought you were. It’s not like that stopped me from falling in lo—hhhhhhh—Line…?”

Oh no. Oh _God. _

Aziraphale’s battle with the cardigan had kept him distracted enough not to catch Crowley’s near-fatal slip-up,[11] but that had been close. Too close. He sucked in a long, deep breath; one last gasp of sunlight before a bottomless plunge.

Crowley bit down. With the tip of his squirming, traitorous tongue pinched between his teeth, he hissed softly to himself: “So that’s why you smell different.”

* * *

Crowley didn’t take chances. He had fail-safes for his fail-safes, and foremost among these emergency chutes, more powerful even than a five-gallon bucket of holy water, was a talent for reducing Aziraphale into concepts. Unlike a thinking, feeling _never-quite-more-than-frienemy,_ a string of monosyllabic Gregorian chants could easily be eye-rolled into the back of one’s mind.

_Di-vi-ni Ab-sur-di. Ahhh-mennnnnn._

In reality, Aziraphale rarely reduced so easily; he was much like a lumpy roux in that way.

For instance: Crowley knew the self-styled bookseller had never once turned a profit, that any customer who dared cross his threshold bearing food or drink was chased away with a broom. But Crowley had also witnessed Aziraphale give away museum-quality heirlooms to the first person who asked nicely. He had seen the angel fold priceless gold-leafed vellum maps into origami cranes and press them _oh so gently_ into the bruise-darkened hands of children—the kind of unwashed, desolate children who smiled only at pictures of far-away places.

Outwardly, the veneer of intellectual aesthete should have been enough to condemn Aziraphale on any of Crowley’s variously shaky ethical grounds. The French might have been on to something with that head-slicing machine, but even Crowley had been forced to admit that moral superiority could never be so cut and dry.[12]

Crowley would have liked nothing more than to cast Aziraphale as a Christmas tree angel. He was so far over the top that Michaelangelo had glanced up from painting the Sistine Chapel and advised him to please tone it down. He was an old scrap of glass-eyed tinsel and candle wax atop a mountain of flammable worldly possessions, a self-delivering punch line.[13] But Aziraphale always laughed first, and his smile was an incomparable marvel; the ultimate _wahoo. _Much like the first rainbow or a prism flashing in the sun, you really had to see it for yourself.

Yes, _haha,_ look how vain, how rotten with indolence, how stuffed-shirted and proud, how indomitably full of beauty and forgiveness… oh no.

Love. It dripped off Aziraphale in rivulets, honey-thick and aggressively sweet. Standing anywhere near him, one got the impression of waltzing with the bees. Under Aziraphale’s stewardship, _bless this mess_ was somehow elevated from cross-stitch cliché to divine Truth. In all their various dust-blanketed forms, Aziraphale’s greedy magpie nests followed this same ineffable design. After all, this Angel had also been Made, so very long ago. He also had been given his Purpose, and could not help but follow it. Throw a shattered Tiffany lamp on top of the tallest landfill in the world and it will still light up like a church window when the sun hits it just right.

There were the obvious trophies: seminal works pulled from fires and shipwrecks. Gilded leather spines and hand-illuminated scrolls. And yet for every jeweled volume, he possessed a dozen humbler manuscripts, and these were the more treasured by far. The unheard-of, the scribbled-upon, the re-typed and taped-over.

These stained rags had mopped the enlightened sweat from the brows of the overdosed and homeless, the anonymous and disenfranchised. Confessions from the delivered, who had woken up after their worst nightmares to find themselves in shelters and hospitals and subsidized flats with money in their pockets and warmth in their veins. Aziraphale had a vast repository of the rarest and most coveted of all literary finds: the words of those who lived to write one more page.

Look even deeper than that, though, and you’d find the truly blackmarket goods. The angel was a natural smuggler. Fom the Beginning he had been contradictory and dishonest even to God’s own face, which meant he could keep just about anything hidden up his sleeve. Not merely coins, scarves, and the occasional asphyxiated dove. Frittered away in trunks and crawlspaces and sometimes even in the boot of Crowley’s car, Aziraphale had secreted entire flocks.

During the Blitz, Crowley had saved a handful of books. Aziraphale had saved much more.

* * *

“Honestly, Crowley, What nonsense. ‘_Smell different.’” _Aziraphale huffed. “I thought _you_ were supposed to be the progressive one. It's only a minor tweak to the corporation; hardly even counts. I doubt I’m so monumentally changed.”

Crowley buried his face in a silk-lined coat, groaning at his own stupidity. “Fresh grass and lilacs and… and… fucking _lemon biscuits. _How did I not—shouldn't even be able—You smell like—like a goddamn _picnic!”_

Aziraphale went utterly still. “So what if I do.”

“Just old-fashioned comeuppance, isn’t it?” Crowley pointed: above, below, the whole swirly-whirly clusterfuck. “We dupe the powers that be _one_ time, and now suddenly I’m getting an uncut noseful straight from the Font, aren’t I?”

“The Font? You _can’t_ mean—”

“Oh ho!! I can! And I’ll bet anything you’ve had no end of tantalizing, come-hither _musks_ creeping down into every little nook and cranny lately. Hm? I'm picking up on all your…” he could not say it, would not say it, “and you've got first row seats to all my…”

_“Oh good Lord.”_

“Yuh.” Crowley nodded. “We’ve swapped.”

“Is that what you call it?” Aziraphale made a grotesque motion toward his own groin and whispered, “_Swapping?”_

“Satan give me strength.” Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, angel. Not your sodding ineffable country manor. I mean the two of us. Trading corporations; it had _side effects._”

“Oh! Yes! Well, yes, that’s it exactly. I’ve never felt quite so…” Finally, _finally,_ Aziraphale turned the daintiest shade of pink.

The body-swapping plan had been brilliant; had saved both their skins. It had also come on so suddenly that Crowley had neglected to reset his racing car of a body to factory defaults before handing over the keys. What a Christmas surprise it must have been for Aziraphale to discover in a single blow that not only did Crowley keep no food in his apartment, but also happened to be the owner of one infernally ravenous vulva—at least at the time of their arrest.[14]

Crowley hadn’t given it a thought until now; but how _strange_ that upon returning from his brief country sojourn in Aziraphale’s four door sedan, he had immediately gone home and traded down to a stick shift. Not only that, he hadn't even bothered getting said car out of the garage for a test drive, hadn't so much as revved his own engine since… had it really been that _long?_

Aziraphale ran his thumbs nervously around the unbelted waist of his trousers. “I suppose after it was all over, there was no reason to continue… being as I had been. Nobody was watching anymore. There was no reason _not_ to try it.”

“Try. What?” Crowley croaked.

Aziraphale gave Crowley a searching look. “Oh my dear, perhaps I _was_ treating this a bit like hollandaise after all. I've been so crass. I know gender has never been some lackadasical _experiment_ for you, and I didn’t mean… I’m sorr—”

Crowley held up his hand. “Don’t start apologizing. Especially when I don’t know what for.”

“I just wanted to see for myself what all the fuss was about.”

“The fuss?”

“Well yes. In fact, the… _multiple_ fusses.”

Crowley’s eyebrows shot into his hair, positively rocket launched. “Did you… feel particularly… _fussy_… this morning?”

“Oh yes.” Aziraphale sighed as if relieved of a terrible weight and turned his eyes to read an invisible sum off the ceiling. “Once or twice or… you know, I lost count.”

The tight wad of nerves in Crowley’s throat dropped ten stories and crashed into the front of his wet-look ladies’ jeans, which instantly became two sizes too small as a tiny, trampled _“…oh did you?”_ peeped out of his mouth along with a flicker of tongue.

Aziraphale didn’t smell like a picnic anymore; his scent wafted across the room like steam rising from a late-nite all-you-can-eat buffet.

“Moment of truth, angel.” Crowley cautiously wet his lips. Running blindly for the ledge and refusing to look down, he pulled his sunglasses from his face. “Before the day is over, is there anything else you might like to fuss with?”

The angel’s pulse jumped visibly in his throat, leaping just above the unbuttoned top of his brand-new cotton collar. He summed it all up rather eloquently when he swallowed and said: “Hunhm mmm umnngm.”[15]

* * *

The ride back to Soho took decades longer than it should have; partly because there was a jam on the A4 which seemed strangely nefarious in origin and partly because Crowley was willfully driving toward the point of no return.

Aziraphale eyed the mob of traffic and fidgeted with his pinky ring. “You’re not upset with me, are you?”

“Upset? Course not.” Crowley drummed his fingers along the wheel. “Surprised, maybe. But… _nah._ Thinking about it, this whole reveal was _very_ like you. Unpacking all that male privilege you’ve been toting around for centuries…” He smirked. “Just for the _orgasms.”_

Aziraphale’s lips pinched into that impure pucker he sometimes wielded when he’d particularly gotten Crowley’s goat. “Do watch the road, dear. I think you’ve taken rather a wrong turn…”

Crowley lifted his hands from the wheel. “I can drive this route in my sleep. Now, would you care to explain why you decided to unleash your newfound nudist streak back there in the world’s most expensive strip club?”

“Thank you for that, by the way.”

“The nudity?”

“The _expense.”_

Crowley pridefully recalled the thunk of his stamped-metal executive card when he’d lazily dropped it onto the shop counter. Without blinking, without so much as asking permission, he hadimpulsively paid for Aziraphale’s entire custom-fitted winter wardrobe—to be delivered in 6-8 weeks—racking up a skyscraper-high balance that would barely make a dent in one of his many offshore accounts. Paying for things was show-offy fun, especially when it wasn’t a miracle.

“Aw. Well. Yeah. S’nothing. Happy to— _I mean. _You didn’t need to put on a show. Would have treated you anyway.” Crowley rubbed the wheel like a magic lamp; no helpful genie emerged. “You know that. Right?”

Aziraphale pointed to the speedometer; Crowley scowled and eased his leaden foot off the gas just a smidge, bringing them safely back under the stingy tick for ninety.

“It’s very simple,” Aziraphale said. “I got naked in front of you because I wished for you to see me naked.”

“You— but that’s. Huh. Not exactly how you’ve… been… _doing things_… till now.”

“Things change.”

“Yes well _when_ exactly did these _exact_ things change? And I swear, if you say _this morning…”_

Aziraphale didn’t. In fact, he said nothing whatsoever. He said such vast amounts of nothing that Crowley felt compelled to fill in the gaps. He attempted to smile and ended up gritting his teeth instead.

“So you’ve really never… made that particular Effort… till now.”

“No.”

“Not once?”

“Never occurred to me.”

“It— _Really?_ But you’ve. You've.”

“Fucked? Oh yes.”

Crowley sounded out the word as if he’d never heard it before. _“Fu—ck—ed.”_

“Fucked, dear boy. Yes.”

“But… but who? And when?” _And why not with me,_ Crowley did not add.

Aziraphale’s elaborate full-body gesture somehow encompassed a little bit of everything as he glanced worriedly out the window and said, “I really do think you’re going the wrong way.”

“Wilde,” Crowley said with vindicated finality. He’d known, of _course_ he’d known.

“Oh let’s not compare lists. I don't see what's so shocking about a few _minor_ literary dalliances when you rolled with every painter who ever held a brush. ”

“Yeah but that’s… part of the gig. Artistic _inspiration.”_

“Not anymore.”

“I suppose,” Crowley allowed, suddenly nervous about where this was headed.

“Do you still make a habit of _inspiring _people?” Aziraphale asked, refusing to make eye contact. He seemed to be staring a hole through a neighboring taxicab, whose driver looked around nervously, wondering what he’d done to cause such offense.

Crowley blew out a breath. He wasn’t walking into _that_ landmine without an explanation, but before he could ask for one, Aziraphale struck first.

“Ah. That would be a _yes,_ I take it.”

“Hold on. I'm sorry. Are you _jealous?”_

“No!” Aziraphale said, much too quickly. “Perfectly natural for you… to… do _that_… with everyone and… anyone.”

“Why didn't you _say_ it bothered you?” Crowley visibly agonized, but Aziraphale wasn’t looking.

“Would you have cared?”

This was a loaded question. All Crowley could do was wave his arms.

Aziraphale huffed: “Stop having a fit and watch the—”

“Don’t have to watch any bloody road anymore, do I? Ride’s over. We’re here.”

They were, in fact, _right there_. Crowley squealed to a stop in front of A.Z. Fell and Co. and tossed one wheel over the curb. Killing the engine, he flopped against the seat and crossed his arms so petulantly his jacket creaked.

_Open your own damn door, angel. See how you like it_.

Aziraphale glanced at the front door of his shop and sighed. “I should have known better than to expect… that is… I _had_ no expectations… We’re ex-enemies. _Friends.”_

“Oh, sure. Of course.” Crowley gnashed his teeth at the Bentley’s interior, having war flashbacks. “Of course we’re _friends._ _Best friends. _How much _friendlier_ can we get!?”

“Well I’m so sorry if it’s been _frustrating for you _but I can’t possibly imagine what—”

“I don't need to have sex with you, if that’s what you’re on about. I never even— you told me to go slow! If we go any slower, we’ll be rolling backwards down a hill!_”_

Crowley smacked the dashboard with both hands, which the Bentley considered mightily unfair. She revved her engine, which neither demon nor angel seemed to notice, nor did they seem particularly bothered when she turned away from the curb and slid back into traffic with an 8-cylinder growl.

Crowley’s hands curved onto the wheel without missing a beat, as if the whole ‘throwing a motorized tantrum’ idea was entirely his own. “What, Aziraphale?! Do you expect me to burst into flames or go feral or parade my paramours beneath your bedroom window whilst youweep into a doily?”

“Oh no, of course not! As if you’d go to the trouble when I’m the Unfuckable Principality Aziraphale!”

“Enough with the _fucking _language.”

“I will _not _be censored by the likes of _you! _You_,_ fuckity… fuck. Fucker!”

Crowley sucked his teeth. “Unbelievable. It’s like I don’t know you at all.”

Through no fault of Crowley’s own (his feet were too busy kicking peevishly at the floor to even bother touching the pedals) the Bentley was picking up speed. The car was approaching a downright physics-skirting genre of speed, the kind best measured by the depth of its accompanying _boom._[16] Reality distorted past the Bentley’s windows in psychedelic, brain-melting streaks, but both occupants had yet to notice a thing out of place.

Aziraphale fumed and poked at the air with several _how-dare-you_ finger ripostes. “Wasting my time… can’t believe it’s the _demon_ who needs catching up… you know I thought I almost had you there in Tadfield Manor with that ‘_nice’_ comment, but oh no! Is this all because I wouldn’t run away to Alpha Centauri? If so, pardon me for having a _conscience,_ but—”

“Oh it’s a little late to be playing _the holier-than-thou card, _isn’t it?”

“Exactly. This is exactly it. It’s always some grand gesture with you, something you need to _prove._ I’ve never been your type, have I? Not _revolutionary_ enough. Not _demonstrative _enough_. _Even when I’m…_ Look at me!_ Full speed ahead, Crowley! I had half a dozen vaginal orgasms for breakfast, I am ready and willing, you thick-headed lizard! And when I said _let’s go to your place,_ I didn’t mean _the damned book shop!_”

“First of all, I am _not_ a lizard. Second of—what did you sssssay?”

The Bentley stopped. Abruptly. There was another _boom_ and a nearby highrise lost several minimally important street-facing windows.

Aziraphale fumbled with the door, which did not open. The Bentley wasn’t having that. “No need to rub it in if you aren’t interested! Honestly, the _nerve. _Dumping me at my own door after I asked—so plainly—to stay the night with you!”

“You what?” Crowley’s head fairly leapt from his shoulders; the serpentine flexibility of his neck was all that kept him from discorporating on the spot. Crowley hissed. “What Victorian flower language nonsense is this? Asked? You never _asked _anything.”

“What? But I gave you all the— why won’t this blasted door _open?”_ Aziraphale gave up, collapsing sweatily onto his end of the seat as if he’d been arm-wrestled into submission.[17] “I don’t know! It’s not— For Heaven’s _sake,_ people can’t just go around blurting out exactly what they mean whenever they feel like it! How was I supposed to just _tell you _when I made such a _scene_ with that holy water, and now… ohh it’s too late. No, I’ve waited too long. This feeling isn’t mutual anymore, is it? Assuming it ever _was.”_

Aziraphale looked away and appeared to stop breathing. Admittedly, it was awfully difficult for him to multitask at a time like this; he had just looked out the Bentley window expecting to see his lonely old book shop only to discover that the Bentley was no longer parked in front of A.Z. Fell and Co., or indeed, anywhere near Aziraphale’s side of London at all.

Crowley had yet to notice anything, he was too busy trying to force smoke out of his nose. Aided by the Bentley’s saucy backbeat, in a voice several octaves below his usual register, he rumbled: “Mutual? That is the _smallest_ possible word for the feeling I have.”

Aziraphale turned back to Crowley, his head wobbling toward the Bentley’s roof as if readying to float away. Dreamily, he said, “Oh? What’s the biggest?”

It was a dare, thought Crowley. Had to be.

Alright. Fine.

Crowley gathered his strength. His teeth sharpened, his jaw dislocated, his tongue split in two. He carefully formed the word, welled it up out of a shadowy pit, forced it all the way from stomach to esophagus until his insides smoked with acid. Painfully, nauseatingly, he worked each letter up his throat and regurgitated the whole mess into the angel’s lap, piece by sordid piece.[18]

_L—O—V—E_

When it was done, he blew a smoke ring into Aziraphale’s gaping mouth. Which Aziraphale, with all due reverence, shudderingly breathed in. With a fluttery-eyed exhale, the angel slid closer and purred, “Let’s go inside.”

Inside… Crowley’s eyes wandered blearily over the angel’s shoulder and finally noticed the hulking spectre of his own glass-fronted apartment building. The Bentley—relieved that all the hard work of her near-teleportation had finally been acknowledged—promptly improvised a parking space, turned her engine off, and hunkered into well-deserved cool down.

“How did we—” Crowley _would_ have finished that thought, honest, if Aziraphale hadn’t slipped his hand beneath Crowley’s lapel and just sort of… left it there.

“You _love_ me,” Aziraphale oozed, molten with feeling.

Crowley fumbled with the Bentley fob, but everything had gone all slippery. Despite decades of muscle memory he could no longer remember exactly how to pull key from ignition. Words came out instead, great tumbling bricks that could barely manage a single layer of competent wall.

“W_—_what _else_ could it be? I thought you lot just _knew._ Haven’t exactly been _subtle_, have I? Figured you’d have sniffed me out ages ago_—” _

“Yes, I suppose I did, but… Crowley, darling, calm down. It’s over. We won. We’re safe.”

“—I’m perfectly calm! Y-you! You’re the one who’s. OHhhhH. You _knew, _did you? You knew and still let me _wallow in it._ For _centuries—_”

“I’m so sorry. I _did_ know. Of course I did. And I felt quite the same. But they would have punished you, _ended _you. My dear, I couldn’t let—”

“—_Dear_ who. You and Bambi! Cuh—_could not what?_ WOULD not, more like. Would _never. _Free will, Aziraphale; look it up. I don’t know why you can’t just admit that you lu—huhh. Unnggn—”

Crowley gagged and smacked his lips, trying to get the taste of honey out of his mouth.

“Yes, my love. It's true. Now Would you please _sit still_ and look at me…”

Oh no. No no no. There was nowhere else left to go. He needed _out, _needed air, needed his cold floors and trembling plants. Needed the sky and the stars and an infinity of things he could never touch again.

He strangled the driver-side door handle but it wouldn’t_ budge. _Snarling, he tried again. No escape. Impossible. The door couldn’t _actually _bestuck—

_My darling._

—the Bentley did not _stick. _He rattled the handle until it turned white-hot in his palm, smoldering with fear. Halfway to slag and she still wouldn’t give an inch—

_My dear._

—he stared at the door. Of course it wouldn’t open; the locks were engaged. He scrabbled at the mechanism only to remember the Bentley _had no locks—_

_My love._

—_OPEN UP YOU BASTARD_—

Crowley lurched to the left lapels-first, head whipping round fast enough to give him whiplash. The crash never came. Aziraphale was softness and air, nothing more or less, safe enough to keep Crowley’s bones from flying apart.

“I love you, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered.

Gently, so gently, they closed the only remaining distance between them.

* * *

#### Footnotes

  1. With one angelic exception. [^]
  2. Which Crowley considered one and the same. [^]
  3. Something something ineffable cock joke.[^]
  4. Crowley was something of an expert in this exact kind of change, pun intended.[^]
  5. He’d settled for bug-eyed disbelief, which was mostly hidden by his sunglasses.[^]
  6. Because he knew it would take longer.[^]
  7. Crowley didn’t; he was just very good at Cluedo.[^]
  8. Especially English.[^]
  9. At six thousand years old they were practically grown ups, thank you very much, and therefore could handle these kinds of mature topics.[^]
  10. Seconds earlier; see above.[^]
  11. Get it? Slip-Up? Cuz like, the opposite of falling? Oh never mind.[^]
  12. Not dry at all, actually. Getting ahead in the guillotine business always involves a considerable amount of liquidation.[^]
  13. As Crowley had so painfully discovered: that particular joke was actually on him.[^]
  14. Crowley had been favoring that configuration since his stint as Nanny Ashtoreth. Sure, it was fun to be publicly male again, but even more fun to keep the tight pants and multiple orgasms.[^]
  15. Roughly translated, this sound was actually the entirety of Queen’s “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy” compressed into a multi-octave anxiety burp, but the most relevant line for Aziraphale’s purposes was: “just take me back to yours that will be fine.”[^]  
Also, you can't tell me this a capella version isn't the single most Aziraphale thing you've ever heard:  

  16. A boom which sounded through the Tadfield Quarry like a shot and prompted the Antichrist to look into the sky with a hideously impish grin on his face.[^]
  17. Which is exactly what the Bentley intended. [^]
  18. Not literally. He only threw up in his mouth a tiny bit, and that was mostly just nerves.[^]


	3. Chapter 3

Oh, you wanted a fairytale ending?

_Sit down._

* * *

Once upon a time, a miserable serpent hitched a ride on a boat.[1]

To pay his passage, the serpent slithered between the planks of the monstrous hull. He plugged the leaking bilges with his body, baled the salty water with his mouth. Thus stowed in faith’s fragile underbelly, he saw that nothing but a skin of weeping cyprus and God’s hypothesized favor protected the world from frigid, hungry oblivion. Shivering in those depths, the serpent knew: no evil unleashed by the creatures of Hell could ever compare to the good undone by God’s own hand.

For endless days and nights Her tears fell upon the earth, a desolation of water, vast and unforgiving. The storm obscured the stars, so the serpent charted different constellations: the innumerable snuffed-out motes that slept beneath the waves.

Before, when he’d still had legs to stand on, the serpent had seen the storm roll in. He had smelled the lightning and seen the children fleeing from it. He had begged and blamed and pointed every finger on his bloodied hands and yet he had done nothing, because nothing could stop the Flood.

The serpent despaired and knew no forgiveness. In the darkness of grief he forgot what certainties the tempest had obscured. Forgot that while a dancing world could not help but lose itself in darkness whenever it turned, the sun remained an ever-fixed flame; radiant and eternal.

Emptiness was not what kept that beastly ark afloat.

Far beneath pitch and rope and sail, beneath wine and water and earthen manure, in a pile of filth so far beneath God’s favor that even Hell would have turned turned its nose up at the smell, a thief had smuggled mankind’s most precious contraband. Sheltered in the rotten bottom of the world, forgotten children grieved for home.

An ugly miracle, this. Only the smallest and quietest had been spared, those that could tuck themselves beneath the woolen coats of sheep without sneezing or fussing, who could endure forty days and nights without crying for their mothers. Warming the center of this sickly stash of bodies sat the woolliest ram to ever lead a flock. His eyes were unclouded, his horns like curling flames. In this shape, the angel of the Eastern Gate kept his faithful watch.

Panic-stricken, the serpent jumped ship before he could be discovered. He fell toward the sea in the only way he could: with magnificent ruin. His scales unfurled into feathers, his long body knocked into an arrowhead. This form of lightness and air so contradicted the serpent’s given shape that his self-made wings smoked and withered until they burned black as the rolling thunderclouds, black as the deathless pits from which an angel’s voice had once stirred the aether of unmade worlds.

He burned across the raging sky, flew so far and with such fury he became a steaming ember skipping over a boiling sea with no end or beginning. All he had to guide him was a fading, hopeful scent, distant as a memory. He followed the scent to the world’s fattened middle, where the smell of green things still hung in the air. It was only when he could beat his wings no more, when the last of his strength failed him, that the rich aroma of olives wafted over the horizon and he fell upon the rarified ground in a smoldering wreck, the way he was Made to.

He was exhausted. He was undone. Still, he had to get up. He dusted off his wings and with a ratcheting of ancient joints, stood on burning soles. Hopping from foot to foot, he bullied and mocked the blessed virgin trees until one of them suffered a fit of embarrassment and dropped a ripened branch. Its holiness scalded him, but still he took it up.

The serpent—who at this point only wanted a good long lie-down—lifted his fated baton and thought:_ awful lot of drama for a twig._ Thus encumbered, he flew all the way back across an ocean of salt, cursing up a storm.

Listen. A dove never fetched that bloody olive branch. Are you kidding? A dove, honestly. Lightweight like that wouldn’t have made it half a mile holding a blade of grass.

No. It was a spindly, half-mad scrap of a crow who dropped that stick onto Noah’s great and powerful popsicle stand, and a sodden old sheep who caught it in his teeth.

_So suck on that, God._

* * *

The Bentley released her pent-up prisoners. Crowley and Aziraphale staggered onto the pavement, lurching on four interwoven legs. No room for breath, no time for thought. They were a tooth-knocking tangle of moans careening through space—until the entirety of Crowley’s apartment building dropped across their path like a twenty-story plate-glass anvil. With the _SMACK _of two birds on a windshield, they crashed.

Luckily the building was smart and modern and inhabited by a demon. It knew exactly what to do. As soon as Aziraphale’s eager rump touched its surface, the mirrored wall swiftly whisked itself open.[2] The many-limbed demon/angel hybrid was only picking up momentum and speed, and woe betide anyone who might force either mouth to come up for air. Wisely, people stepped aside.

Crowley and Aziraphale queue-barged their way into an empty elevator car like they owned the place;[3] no one protested. The doors slipped closed the usual way, inadvertently releasing several thousand years of tension. With only a few inches of sheet metal to insulate his moan from the gawking crowd of luxury flat-havers, Crowley finally unhinged himself. He crushed Aziraphale into the wall like so many grapes, sank his teeth into that luscious bottom lip, and coiled one hand into the roots of Aziraphale’s hair. His other hand snaked into the angel’s waistband, yanking him forever closer.

Aziraphale answered accordingly. He leaned back and opened his thighs, framing Crowley’s narrow hips. Not quite begging but _oh,_ so close, he slid greedy hands beneath Crowley’s jacket and whispered a thought so filthy Crowley’s brain failed to parse it. Lips fluttered over Crowley’s jaw before recapturing his mouth. Aziraphale’s lips were soft and pure as cotton, but his kiss was a dollop of undiluted decadence, nothing but dessert. He opened his mouth with the hunger of ages, hot breath and eager tongue rolling across Crowley’s palette like a blowtorch razing across crème brûlée. All that heat shot straight to Crowley’s cock.

No time for artful undressing, oh no, not now, but Crowley would never live it down if he tore those cherished antique trousers. With minimal finesse, he flattened his palm across Aziraphale’s fully-clothed Victorian crotch and slid against pillowy flesh until he found the tell-tale _whump_ of blood on bone. Feeling out that miracle clit for himself, feeling how thunderously Aziraphale was already pulsing, wondering how wet he might be… Crowley’s hips went all woozy, pitching him sideways. He buckled into Aziraphale for a few _guess-what’s-coming_ thrusts, which earned him a caramelized gasp and a serving of boiling-hot angel pelvis. Aziraphale rolled toward him, grinding Crowley’s diligent palm between the sparking tines of their bodies.

Deep and rough and counter-clockwise, like turning back a hundred wasted years, Crowley wound Aziraphale’s coil into an ever-tightening spring and sucked the sweetening air right off his lips. He savored the catches in his breath, the unsteady beat of his pulse quickening, his hips jerking, lifting, closer and closer…

Obligingly, the elevator dinged.

Neither of them had pushed the button for Crowley’s penthouse, but the elevator was no fool. Likewise, Crowley’s front door knew its cue and opened itself with great enthusiasm. It had been waitingfor this moment for decades.

_Sorry for interrupting_, sighed those well-oiled hinges. _Please do go on._

Putting all his remaining swagger into it, Crowley gripped two handfuls of Aziraphale’s belt, all the better to pull the angel into his lair. Walking backwards and hissing in three octaves, he promised: “Gonna take you apart, angel.”

It _sounded_ good. Until they crossed the threshold, where Aziraphale backed the self-styled predator straight into his own wall. Crowley’s head went _thump_ against the concrete; his sunglasses slipped nervously down his nose. Aziraphale’s pupils opened hungrily as he bit his own lip, flashed a tantalizing glimpse of incisor, and tenderly plucked the glasses from Crowley’s face.

“Hmm?” Aziraphale smiled. “If you say so, dear.”

Crowley whimpered and ground himself against Aziraphale’s thigh like an overloaded pepper mill.[4]

Aziraphale leaned into Crowley’s demonic death throes, mouth on his neck, gobbling up every tortured sound. With nimble fingers, he unbuckled Crowley’s hand-crafted five-hundred euro snake-head belt and whipped it out of its loops in a single friction-hot _swoosh_.

Sinking to penitent knees and wetting his lips, Aziraphale set himself to liberating Crowley’s long-suffering erection. Shakily, Crowley lowered his hands onto Aziraphale’s shoulders.

_Shoulders, _Crowley marveled. The untouchable, unknown shoulders of the Principality Aziraphale… Crowley squeezed and dug in with thumbs, exploring. The angel was hard here, planar and rocky as the surface of the moon. Unseen muscles shifted beneath his clothes, flexing across dense ridges of bone. Tentatively, Crowley slid his fingertips toward the angel’s naked throat, grazing his Adam’s apple with a nail. The intimacy of this, more than anything else they had done so far, set Crowley’s pulse ablaze.

Aziraphale’s smile scooted to one side of his face as if making room for trouble. With unrelenting _savoir-fair,_ he slipped from his coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and pulled Crowley’s trousers clear down to his knees. Airy little fingers danced along Crowley’s length, and then Aziraphale rubbed the tip of Crowley’s cock against his cheek. He met Crowley’s eyes, looking lopsided and ruddy and phenomenally alive in a way Crowley had never seen him, had never even dreamed. His smile was no less angelic for the furiously pulsing cock near his mouth. If anything, he looked more splendidly Divine than ever, possibly just because he _could_.

Crowley’s vision tunneled to preserve the sight. He took a deep breath, thinking this might be a grand time to rumble Aziraphale’s name with the weight of a thousand collapsing suns behind it, but all that came out was a desperate, worshipful, _“Please.”_

Aziraphale sank his soft, hot mouth onto Crowley’s cock with a sated _mmmmmmmm_. Crowley gurgled. Upon further introduction to the indomitable back wall of Aziraphale’s throat, Crowley choked; at the first swirl of Aziraphale’s practiced tongue, Crowley’s knees devolved into primordial ooze. He fisted both hands deep into Aziraphale’s hair, struggling to stay upright.

With a laugh that resonated through veins and rigid tissue, echoing clear down into Crowley’s pinky toes, Aziraphale pulled back slowly and _sucked._

’Twas not a dignified noise that emerged from Crowley then.

Crowley pulled the angel back by the roots, panting in ragged bursts. Something akin to “N—nuh!” or maybe “Fuhhh-h!” jumped out of his gasping throat.

Undeterred, Aziraphale released Crowley with the most pornographic of popping sounds, then lavished him with long strokes of tongue and teasing little flicks to the weeping tip of his cock. 

_“Yuhhhhhhh,”_ Crowley wheezed. Giving up on speech, he resorted to hand signals. Aziraphale took the hint—eventually—and rose to his feet. Crowley didn’t think, his fingers were already on the buttons of Aziraphale’s vest. He’d felt them, these buttons, so many weeks ago. Done them up proper from the wrong side, with the wrong hands. Undoing was infinitely better, he decided.

The vest slipped to the floor with a velvety, long-suppressed sigh; practically since its first thread was stitched, it had been waiting for its chance to crumple to the floor in just such a pile of passion-strewn clothes. Crowley’s jacket soon followed and kept it company; likewise their shirts refused to be left out. Shoes and socks slipped off with unprecedented ease and excused themselves to carouse under furniture, pants practically stepped out of themselves and tangled up into heaps. In the process of shedding one another’s skins, Crowley and Aziraphale left a trail of interlocking yin-yang puzzle pieces that trickled all the way from Crowley’s front door to his eagerly awaiting potted ferns. Once the clothes had been abandoned, there was nowhere left to go but down.

The plants, incredibly, were not frightened by any of this. Quite the opposite; their ecstacy was palpable. They unfurled and shone invitingly, verdantly, reaching out their glossy fans and sweet green blades and many-splendored, carefully-cultivated sexual organs, releasing a bridal shower of pollen and spores in an allergen cloud potent enough to kill all but the hardiest of florists. The frond-laden floor that was the plants’ domain was otherwise spotless; clean enough to eat from. It was also disagreeably hard and cold, most of the time. Today, for whatever reason, the solid blocks of Crowley’s brutalist atrium had decided concrete was very _done_ and wouldn’t it be nice to give blood-warm padded surfaces a go?

It was onto this plush and springy surface that Aziraphale’s equally luxurious body tumbled. The angel laughed as he fell, every creamy surface of his body rippling with slow and sultry impact. Crowley, still on his feet, could only stare. And _throb. _

Gazed at so plainly, the confidence Aziraphale had led with seemed to evaporate. His eyes flickered to his nakedness. His hands, suddenly fidgety and shy, seemed unable to settle on any one body part worth hiding.

“Don’t you dare,” Crowley growled, glad to have his voice back. He dropped to his knees and crawled over to Aziraphale, lifting the angel’s hands above his head so he might place them gently but firmly where they couldn’t get in the way. “Do you have any idea how _delicious_ you look?”

It was a rhetorical question, a way to put words in a mouth that wanted to do something _much_ more productive with itself. Aziraphale, as always, insisted on taking Crowley seriously. He cleared his throat in a meek-minded way that made Crowley squint.

“Oh… well. I’m afraid I am… a bit. Erm. _soft._”

“Soft?” Crowley looked Aziraphale up and down so slowly he felt his vertebrae creaking. Deliberately, he curved both of his palms against Aziraphale’s clamped thighs, urging him to spread. “Yessssss…” Crowley agreed. “You certainly are.”

The plush bed of Aziraphale’s body flowed beneath Crowley’s fingers, sending mayday signals to an already frantic brain. He squeezed and rubbed, imagining a bright future where his cock might wind up trapped _right there, _thrusting into that succulent groove, until he spilled all over Aziraphale’s sweet and twitching little belly…

Put these thighs in the Louvre, Crowley decided. Proserpina never looked half as good squirming in Pluto’s clutches.[5] Higher functions jumped ship, every logical impulse undulated beneath waves of pleasurable flesh— until somewhere in the back of his naked, squirmy thoughts, Crowley heard someone rudely dismissing his favorite new exhibit.

“I suppose voluptuous isn’t really… the… _done thing_ these days, is it?” Aziraphale was muttering.

“Angel,” Crowley said.

“Hm?”

Crowley sat back, making a prominent display of his saluting erection. “You see this?”

Aziraphale made the sort of sound that meant _I do _and also: _that is absolutely the most beautiful cock I have ever seen, dear boy._

“That’s for you.” Crowley slapped Aziraphale’s thigh and savored every ripple. Mouth watering, he watched his own demonically-minded thumb creeping toward Aziraphale’s vulva. As Aziraphale’s slick and swollen clitoris flattened beneath the pad of his thumb, Crowley tilted his head, bit the inside of his cheek, and felt his cock twitch. Desire, yes. And behind that, a whole other universe of Wanting…

He circled lightly, just enough to get Aziraphale’s hips rocking, then greedily dipped his fingers lower. Finding Aziraphale slick and lush, Crowley moaned as though pleasuring himself.[6] “You are_ dripping _wet.”

Those were his last words before slinking onto his belly and burying his face to the nose.

Aziraphale seized, knees drawing up, but Crowley was prepared. He clamped down on one twitching thigh, lifting Aziraphale’s leg over his shoulder, sinking further down into his warmth and weight. Crowley curled his pumping fingers and split his talented tongue, setting an irregular, cresting rhythm that twisted over Aziraphale’s clit with dizzying two-fold circles, again and again and again.

He slipped another finger inside, humming into all that molten texture, vibrating his tongue until Aziraphale’s sweet sugary sighs burned down to a stream of deep black moans, pleasured noises swirling through Crowley’s lizard brain, rich and decadent as treacle. Aziraphale’s hips rolled ever-more erratically into Crowley’s mouth, and Crowley, demon that he was, redoubled the efforts of his tongue in a way only a wily serpent could: like purring in the voice of God, like a feather strapped to the business end of a reciprocating saw, like ten thousand decibels of _R-r-R-r-R-r-R-rollllllllling R’s_ thrown into a pit of slippery, swirling sibilants.

Aziraphale went supernova. Not in a precisely literal sense, though unsuspecting people as far away as the Sierra Nevadas noticed their skin prickling and wondered why it had suddenly got so hot and humid. The angel cursed and cried, helpless beneath Crowley’s mouth. Crowley lapped up every quiver and flinch of desire, thrusting his tongue further into all that gorgeous light, basking in the wanton glow of an unfinished sun, drinking down a burn so bright it could forge a world.

Crowley had been here before. Happily, he had burned for Aziraphale, had stepped willfully into a ring of radiant doom, found his pleasures in the wrath of Heaven. That had felt amazing. Very naughty, oh yes. Wonderfully defiant. But this? There was no comparison. Aziraphale’s native heat, which did not burn but quenched, was a flood of ecstasy. A feast of salty nectar dribbled over Crowley’s hands and chin. Juice spilled down Aziraphale’s thighs, shimmered across his folds, pooled under his trembling, decadent bottom. Craving every drop, Crowley rubbed his face through all that glittering mess and inhaled a perfume Heaven could never dream up— not in a million years.

Aziraphale’s celestial pussy smelled like nothing angelic; it smelled like all the pleasures on Earth, like skin and sweat, like Aziraphale. Like warm rice wine and slick-boiled kombu, like the saucy vanillin folds of well-loved novels spread beneath curious fingers, like brioche and bruised pears lavished in dark caramel syrup.

Reeling with recognition, Crowley’s long, long life flashed before his eyes; countless memories of Aziraphale’s desire rising to his nose, a scent often noted, but hitherto unnamed. That scent had hidden beneath silent glances and words unspoken, in so many unfinished moments between them, in the held-breath impacts of accidental touches. Infinite moments stripped of oxygen and left floating through time now rang out a bottomless, triumphant chord. Long-dormant desires boiled to the surface, eddies and currents of inner heat rose to the angel’s shaking crust and burst forth like long-held notes, blazing out one by one, until…

Crowley pulled back, gasping, and released Aziraphale from an unrelenting orgasm. By the looks of things, it had been merciless; God only knew how long Crowley had drawn the pleasure out.[7]

As Crowley watched his angel spin back down into his body, he was treated to a sight of pure, transported glory. Afterglow was an art where Aziraphale was concerned. Infinite pinpricks of infinite color danced across his aura. Sparks flickered gaily in and out of planes unseen, opening and closing the doors of perception like all-knowing eyes or bouncing baby stars or a showstopping explosion of glitter and sequins.

It wasn’t enough to watch. Crowley smeared his hands across Aziraphale’s slick entrance, stealing two palmfuls of fresh angel cum all for himself. He poured that rapturous _aqua vitae _over his mouth, his neck, across his heaving chest. Everywhere he touched, he _sizzled; _a penetrating, innervating burn, like writhing naked on a church floor. Eyes rolling back, voice cracking like thunder, Crowley rubbed steaming perfection into his skin, soaking it into his very depths, coating the twitchy plane of his belly, tangling through the sweaty reaches of his pubic hair, smearing _Eau du Aziraphale _all over the length of his aching, jealous cock.

Newly baptized, head filled with sacred tendrils, throat choked with incense, Crowley blew smoke, floated alongside a lifting cloud, and soared. From this extraordinary height, Temptation watched themself unravel, watched their hips shudder, their head fall back. A gleaming thread of cum flashed across the gap between bodies like a filthy string of fate, drawing the sky back down. Descending, unraveling, something cool and soothing coiled into Crowley’s itching bones, something that started—and could never end—with _ELL. _

All golden eyes and drooling fangs, she began to change.

Aziraphale ran his hands through Crowley's lengthening curls, taken hostage by his own nostalgic moan. “Ms. Ashtoreth,” he said, churning the air between them with hot-lunged laughter. “What a _pleasure_ to see you again.”

Crowley’s eyes darkened with intent; her body slithered comfortably into her old, streamlined curves. “Francis, you frisky little garden gnome. How on Earth did you get so disheveled?”

Aziraphale glanced at the sheltering canopy of Crowley’s plants, which seemed to have crowded in, or spontaneously reproduced, or simply made themselves look lofty and multitudinous, somehow… “Oh… some foul _fiend_ has been having their way with me.”

“Oh no. How terri—”

Aziraphale grinned and pulled Crowley down, body-to-body, burying his face in her thickening curls. Her hair grew halfway to her waist now, curling into succulent scarlet vines. Rolling her onto her back, Aziraphale traced the deep curve of her hip, the soft, tight swell of her breasts. Ever the tease, he skirted his tickle-soft touch around her eager center.

“Oh my dearest.” Something caught in Aziraphale’s throat as he whispered: “You look so beautiful this way.”

Crowley pouted. “I _always_ look beautiful.”

“Of course you do,” Aziraphale cooed, “In every form. Splendid. Ravishing. Irresistible. But I have to admit a certain… admiration…”

“Really? Never would’ve pegged the great southern pansy for a ladies man.” Biting her lip and settling into the spongy floor, Crowley reconsidered. “No. I take it back. I absolutely _would have_ pegged you… If only you’d asked.”

“Not what I—” Crowley’s meaning pierced Aziraphale’s post-orgasmic fog with a visible _twang._ “…Although…”

Crowley’s eyelids lowered hungrily. “Just say the word.”

“Later,” Aziraphale promised, teasing one of Crowley’s nipples to a tight peak. “Something to look forward to.”

“And right now?” Crowley’s legs fell open.

Aziraphale considered this ripe invitation—his eyes glazed over and his hands twitched toward Crowley’s welcoming entrance—but something pulled him back.

“It’s… just.” Haltingly, he drew Crowley’s new feminine shape in the air. “I think I might like to try such a corporation… for myself.”

“Oh _please_ do.” Crowley’s head swam with pretty pictures of angelic hips and tits, of two soft bodies intertwined.

“I don’t know. I’m not exactly woman material.”

“What does that— how— _what? _Curves and you? That’s like… well… like something made in Heaven, dammit! I’ll be cross if you _don’t _try it_,_ now.” When Aziraphale failed to answer, Crowley sat up on her elbows, worrying her lip. “Angel… is this… listen. Don't change yourself on my account. I don’t need—”

“It's not like that, you silly little morsel. I’ve been wanting to shuck off this old gender for _ages._”

“B-but— I thought— You said making that Effort had never occurred to you!”

“Oh Crowley… when will you learn not to listen to anything I say? It had never occurred to me that I might _get away with it.”_

Crowley gaped. “Get away with it? Who would would’ve stopped you? Even Heaven isn't _that_ backwards.”

“No, indeed not. But… What I mean is… I’ll look absolutely ridiculous with a bosom.”

Crowley blinked and shook herself. “A… _bosom._”

“You know what I mean.”

“I absolutely do _not._ Is that what all this fuss was about? Aziraphale—” Crowley nabbed the angel’s pouty chin and pulled him down to lick the tip of his nose. “Wear any bloody suit you like. You’ll still be loveliness incarnate.”

Aziraphale blushed the color of a red delicious and settled her legs more comfortably over Crowley’s waist. The last of her edges rounded away as she leaned down and wriggled every newly-sensitized inch of their bodies together. “Might I tempt you—”

“Mmmmmm,” Crowley purred, going in for another bite.

* * *

_(love is a curse)_

Ask Aziraphale, Angel of the Eastern Gate — who opened his arms and bestowed upon Adam the gift of fire like it was nothing at all — who watched in terror as humanity burned and slashed holiness into world — who aged immeasurably after stepping from the Gate — who burrowed into lonely corners of the world, dusty and sun-limned and immovable as moss.

Ask Crowley, Serpent of the Garden — who whispered that Eve could be more than a rib —who screamed at God and Man alike and remade herself in no one’s image — who fell downwards for eternity without ever hitting rock bottom — who hardened into something jagged and disruptive, like a stone thrown through a window.

_(love is a blessing)_

Ask A. Z. Fell, bookworm and neighbor — whose manicured hands built churches and temples — who wept over bones in the Library of Alexandria — who kissed the brows of sinners and saints with equal delight — who learned to dance the gavotte for a lark — who lusted after life’s pleasures with untrammeled joy.

Ask A. J. Crow, philosopher and muse — whose questions raised eyebrows and toppled regimes — who worshiped daVinci and Mahler and Kahlo — who ravished half of Europe with empowering delight — whose thorny blooms grew splendid and terrible and magnificent— who loved humankind with unspoken passion.

Ask the prophecies pulled from the stones, and they will tell you the truth:

Ages ago, two very different people loved the same man. He wasn’t much to look at, this heart-stealing carpenter, but he had a way about him, you see. Great gentleness walked beside him, and unbent rebellion marched with him too.

It ended badly, as great loves do, whenever human hearts are pierced by splinters of fear.

But love cannot be hung upon a nail.

_ (love is salvation)_

* * *

I’ve got yours, I’m quite sure. Oh, we’re all jumbled. Come back here—

N’uh. I like it. Smells like you.

Well, if you _must. _

Why are you looking at me like that?

Like what?

Like you’re winding up to say something… _four-lettered._

Not at all. I know small words break you out in a rash. I‘m wondering about physics.

Oh no. No, no, no. Call head office for your mathemagical quandaries.

No quandaries. A simple demonstration.

Do you need a projector, cuz I might still h—

Will you waltz with me, darling?

Angel, please, I am _begging_ you to make sense.

Stand over here.

Do I have to? I’ve been shagged rather out of my—

Hands, please. Put this one here… no, a bit lower—_too low—_that’s it… oh stop making that _face_ and lead. It's merely a box step, starting from the— no dear, your other right. There we go.

Am I waltzing…

Your approximation of a waltz is. Err. Well. That is to say…

Thought so.

Surely you know about centrifugal motion, my dear.

Centri… frugal. Sure. Repelling force. But no, angel, you're thinking of gravity. Drawing us together like, heh, haaaaa weh-Hell— some great big astral bodies banging together if you know what I—

_Gravity?_ Feh. If the good Lord had left you to your own devices, the universe would’ve been gobbled up by black holes inside a month. No, no, I need you to really think. How can everything spin apart and hold together all at once?

Oh is _that_ your question? Hell, that one’s easy…

…

Mmmhfmmm… no! Stop right this instant. I am _trying_ to tell you something important. _Watch the toes. _

I’m watching, I’m watching.

Now. Answer me this. _Did you know_ a person standing on the Equator weighs about point five percent less than the same person standing on the poles?

Five point— what? Did Oscar Bloody Wilde teach you to confound people like this?

Hush. We are talking about the Equator.

Course we are. Middle of the Earth. Ineffable waistline. What about it. Are you asking me to take you on a Mediterranean cruise?

No! I’m trying to—well actually, now that you mention—Ah! Stop _tempting_ and pay attention! What I’m saying is: at the Equator, _weight is lifted_. Why do you think that is?

Vineyards per capita, probably.

One more _quip _from you, and I swear—

Promises promises…

It’s the _spin,_ darling. Like this!

You _do_ look good doing that. Show me again.

Yes! Do you see? Spinning right off the Earth, a twirl for lightness—

Ahhh, but that’s spinning away… I much prefer spinning _towards…_

_oomph!_

_ha ha hmmmm_

_…_

What’s that, angel?

I said, _what a lovely scent._

* * *

#### Footnotes

  1. It was a big boat; plenty of room for one more.[^]
  2. The building’s long-suffering doorman casually stepped several feet to his right, trusting that his post had been there all along and likewise trusting that his gratuitously inflated paycheck would be forthcoming.[^]
  3. Crowley did, in fact, own the place.[^]
  4. Which is to say: spicily.[^]
  5. See: _[These Juicy Fuckin' Thighs](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rape_of_Prosepina_September_2015-2b.jpg),_ which art historians agree was the working title of Lorenzo Bernini's _Ratto di Proserpina._[^]  

  6. And oh, he certainly was.[^]
  7. She did know, and was Mightily impressed. Especially by the way Crowley managed to make Time go all bendy around the edges and stretched things into a few decades of bliss without so much as upsetting the minute mark on his atomic mantle clock.[^]
  8. Including this for no reason other than I wanted 42 footnotes and this song happened to become the formative mood-setter while I was writing this story.  


Thank you so much for reading. 

If you would like to reblog or rec this fic on tumblr, [here’s the post to share](https://thunderheadfred.tumblr.com/post/187409826696/%CB%88in%CB%8Csens-a-gum-spice-or-other-substance-that)!

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be my attempt at the requisite Good Omens Crowley/Aziraphale hookup fic but as usual, things quickly got out of hand. Bottomless thanks to my dear friend [gingerhaole](https://gingerhaole.tumblr.com/), who provided all the encouragement and pep-talks a worrywart writer could ever hope for. <3 
> 
> The cover image is [a photo by Antonin Bonnet](http://antoninbonnet.com/portfolio/photographe-parfums-cosmetiques/); an impression of Dior's Eau Sauvage made in some kind of white substrate, possibly flour. If you're at all curious to hear my thoughts re: Crowley and Eau Sauvage (the first fragrance to prominently feature a synthetic jasmine-like molecule called, of all the fuckin things, _hedione_) I have a [tumblr post about ineffable fragrances](https://thunderheadfred.tumblr.com/post/186337428596/aziraphale-aldehydes-nutmeg-cinnamon-coconut).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Incense, by ThunderheadFred](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20620274) by [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig)


End file.
